Sunday, May 31, 2015

First actual mod, plus a removal.

Installed the 42DraftDesigns "shifter base" bushings along with their shift cable bushings. Didn't notice as much of a change as I thought I would, but I also haven't driven the car yet (it might be more noticeable when everything is moving).

During the install, the airbox has to be removed, which technically doesn't even require it to be opened. Most guys remove the bracket that holds the box in place, since the bracket is flimsy and just held in with two 10mm bolts. However, one of the bolts is hard to reach, and it's not the "factory method" to remove the airbox either. The correct way to do it is unscrew a single female-hex bolt at the side of the airbox, and then the entire airbox is supposed to simply pull off of a pair of plastic supports - it has rubber bushings that fit over the supports and you just yank it off the posts, which takes quite a bit of leverage. On other VAG cars (like my old Mk5 R32), the bracket is attached at 3 points and fairly solid; you can really pull to pop the airbox out. Not so on the TTRS, mostly because this bracket is way too weak and isn't triangulated.

So where this all leads to is what I ended up doing. I removed the airbox housing by unbolting the whole bracket like everyone else. However, I wanted to re-install everything the "right" way, bolting the bracket to the car first and then just popping the airbox back on top.

This required the bracket to first be separated from the airbox, which isn't easy to do when nothing is holding the bracket. I decided to open up the airbox to push at the bushings from the inside.

I took the top off, removed the filter, and was greeted with this (holding the bottom half of the airbox here)...

Apparently Audi are now using mouse nests for additional filtration... *eek*
Wonder how many HP I gained by removing this? Nearly half of the airbox was clogged by this mess!

I'm now wondering when this actually happened... they took the car around the beginning of April and supposedly did the 15k service not long after that. Did they not change the air filter? Or did they change it and then the mouse moved in and ate the new filter while the car was sitting on the lot?